The news from the President’s summit is out: no Iran deal, no breakthrough, no respite. British diplomats, those perennial weavers of fragile compromise, now brace for escalation, as if the script were pulled from the annals of 1938 or indeed 2003. I cannot decide whether to laugh or sigh at the sheer predictability of our geopolitical theatre. History does not repeat, but it so often stammers the same tired lines.
One must ask: what did we expect? The American president, a man who regards diplomacy as a mark of weakness, was never going to shake hands with Tehran and call it a day. The collapse of the JCPOA was a foregone conclusion the moment he took office. Yet here we are, wringing our hands as though a deal were ever possible. The British Foreign Office, with its instinct for appeasement (a word that should still make us wince), will now pivot to crisis management. They will issue statements, coordinate with European allies, and perhaps deploy a warship or two to the Strait of Hormuz. But they will not change the outcome.
This is the intellectual decadence I have so often scribbled about. We live in an age where leaders mistake aggression for strength and negotiation for surrender. The comparison to the Fall of Rome is too easy, I know, but consider this: the late Roman Empire was not destroyed by barbarians at the gate as much as by a hollowed-out core, a loss of faith in its own institutions. When a superpower abandons treaties, when it treats alliances as optional, it signals that its word is worthless. And a nation without credit in the world is a nation that has already begun to decline.
But let us not absolve the Iranians. Their regime, a theocratic relic, has long played the victim while funding proxies and enriching uranium. The deal was never perfect; it was a patch, a temporary solution to a chronic ailment. Yet patches are what keep the ship afloat in the storm. Without it, we now face a choice between two evils: a nuclear Iran or a war to prevent one. And wars, as we have learned from Iraq to Afghanistan, have a habit of spiralling beyond their original intent.
British diplomats are right to brace themselves. They will be the ones to clean up the mess, to shuttle between capitals, to offer soothing words while the sabres rattle. But they must also brace for something else: the erosion of their own relevance. When Washington acts unilaterally, London’s influence shrinks. We are no longer the pivot of the world; we are a small island off the coast of Europe, clinging to a ‘special relationship’ that grows less special by the day.
Perhaps I am being too dramatic. Perhaps a new deal will emerge from the ashes. But the pattern is clear: we are moving towards a world where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. And in such a world, intellectual honesty demands that we recognise our own fragility. The British diplomat, with his umbrella and his copy of Thucydides, may find himself as anachronistic as a Roman senator watching the Vandals cross the Rhine.
So yes, brace for escalation. But also brace for the realisation that our age of diplomacy, of cautious steps and paper agreements, may be coming to a close. The new era is one of power alone, and power is a brutal teacher. Let us hope we are not slow learners.
